


The stage will go away

by I_am_sorry



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon - Manga, Divorce, Dom/sub Undertones, Getting Back Together, Happy Ending, Hiking, Honeymoon, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, Magical Realism, Post-Canon, Post-Finale, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, mentions of IwaOi, that never was
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28797894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_am_sorry/pseuds/I_am_sorry
Summary: The divorce papers arrive one cold winter morning. Shouyou stares at them and thinks of wasted effort and dark blue eyes. Wide orange eyes stare and stare and yet the papers on his mail box aren't going away.[Or a “before the divorce and the unlinking happen we should go to that honeymoon trip we never got to have. I have the tickets, already.” Situation.]
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 9
Kudos: 69





	The stage will go away

**Author's Note:**

> The stage will go away, but you will remain.

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.

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The divorce papers arrive one cold winter morning. Shouyou stares at them and thinks of wasted effort and dark blue eyes. Wide orange eyes stare and stare and yet the papers on his mail box aren't going away. 

It's a defeat he knows, he hates the feeling of losing, and frankly Shouyou would prefer to just ignore it, if it was possible but--

But he can't.

Shouyou goes to practice, spikes as hard as he can, talks with his teammates, thinks of some awesome plays, makes passes and concentrates in his blocks but the papers in his mail box keep bothering him all along. Hinata Shouyou is twenty-six years old and just now, at this precise moment, he is starting to notice: maybe all that talks he got when he was young about marring too young are true. Back then he had thought all those talks they had received about _linking_ too soon were just the result of bitter people who had never found their soulmate.

"What’s up Shou?" One of his teammates asks and Shouyou just shakes his head. 

Brazil is hot, always, but Shouyou has gotten used to that. He has gotten used to many things he guesses, like the chain hanging around his neck with a titanium ring that doesn’t fit his own hands. 

Fated pairs are not supposed to marry young. Everyone knows this, and every counselor advises this. Too soon, too much, too stressful -you are supposed to try other things, other persons before committing to your fated one, because once _linked_ you may never have another chance. It hurts physically your partner if you do. _Links_ are weird like that. 

"Shouyou!" A teammate says and Shouyou jumps in time. Spikes the point and his team cheers him on. It’s been a good practice match so far, the last in the season. Winter is just around the corner and all his teammates are ready to call it a day and go home.

With the too blinding lights of the stadium above his head, he thinks in how maybe, all those boring talks were probably true; he really shouldn't have married so young.

***

A person who meets his fated pair doesn't ever regret it, and Shouyou never has, not really, but he thinks maybe Kageyama has. They married at eighteen and thought they were invincible. Two crows searing through the sky ready to take the world.

For Shouyou there has never been anyone else, not even Atsumu who he understood was attractive enough, the setter had tried some flirting with him back then when they were teammates in the Jackals team. It would have hurt physically Kageyama if Shouyou had accepted Atsumu’s intention. The hurt he knows, varies depending of the level of feelings involved in the affair and so as both of them had the fated mark and Atsumu had been clear it was just supposed to be sex without feelings, it’s possible that if Shouyou had accepted, Kageyama may have ended up with a minor scratch on some part of his body. It would have been a very minor hurt, healed in a day or two, but even then Shouyou didn’t accept.

Felt miserable at the thought of it.

Shouyou wonders if the papers weighting in his mail box are because Kageyama met someone better than his fated one. A nice Italian man, maybe?

Shouyou hasn’t hurt ever since they were linked, not minor scratches or immense wounds. Kageyama has never been with anyone else, he knows, but that doesn’t mean, the setter didn’t want to. It’s a possibility, and he thinks it’s not a thing he has the right to be angry about.

Hinata Shouyou and Kageyama Tobio got linked at eighteen, married at the register that same day. It happened about four months before graduation. Not many people knew though, and they did live those four months as an actual couple would, in a little battered house with cheap rent, close to Shouyou’s mom.

They were properly married for four months back then when they were young, didn’t even have a honeymoon trip. Shouyou always complained about that, thought he would like to go hiking with Kageyama, see who climbed faster to the top. He thought one day they would.

Shouyou scratches his neck, takes the papers out of his mail box, and enters his house. He sits, more like slouches in his settee, and takes the papers out of their envelope. The papers are neat, perfectly done and arranged with Kageyama’s sign in every needed clause –there’s a blank space alongside when Shouyou’s sign is expected to go. There’s also a date, about five weeks for now for the _unlinking_ process. 

And after that they can re-marry or have a physical relationship with whoever they like without hurting the other easily enough. Although the fated mark won’t disappear, the black feather on their right inner-arms won’t ever fade, but many people who never meet their soulmates live just like this, get married, have children and never form a link. This people’s mark doesn’t disappear but it stops being important in the grand scheme of things.

***

Shouyou does it without thinking too hard about it, tries to not pay attention at what he is doing when he scribbles his name in the blanks spaces. He also thinks he will show up to the _unlinking_ process without complain but before he gives back the papers and accepts what comes after he has a last wish. A wish he hopes Kageyama is willing to accommodate.

Shouyou takes out his cellphone and dials a number he knows by memory. Kageyama answers at the second ring.

“Tobio?”

“Yes.”

Shouyou thinks about what to say for a long while but in the end he goes with what comes from his heart. There has never been a filter between his brain and his mouth. “Before the divorce and the _unlinking_ happen we should go to that honeymoon trip we never got to have. I have the tickets, already.”

There’s a long silence from Kageyama’s side, so much that Shouyou thinks the other has hung up the call.

They did talk about this trip once, eight years ago.

“…”

“Tobio?”

“I am here.”

_“Wanna go with me?”_

***

Kageyama shows up in Japan just a day after Shouyou does. They have to do the _unlinking_ in their home country anyway, so is very time-saving that Shouyou decided the mountain they are hiking is Mount Meakan located in Akan National Park, Hokkaidō.

“Ready to lose Tobio-kun?” Shouyou smiles once he sees the setter walks towards him in the airport.

Kageyema chuckles but it’s a weak intent, and that makes Shouyou frown. “As if I would ever lose to you.”

Shouyou helps him with his luggage, while they walk towards the exit. “How have you been?”

Blue eyes –yeah and Shouyou is sincere enough to admit here, those eyes of the setter have always been one of the things he likes most about the other along with his hands— just stare at him, calm enough. “I am,” Kageyama pauses and Shouyou looks at him expectant. “I am starting a relationship soon. It is with the idea of marriage, I am not getting younger and, and after volleyball ends for me, I would like to have something to… I would like to be a grandfather someday. It’s an arranged marriage, but she seems nice enough.” 

So… is not a nice Italian man.

Shouyou has thought about what comes after volleyball in passing. He knows he won’t be able to play forever, there’s a retirement age after all, but he has always thought he will worry once he gets there.

“Will you want me there?” Shouyou asks. He doesn’t know if that would be a good idea though. But they have been friends for so long, it would be shitty thing to not go to his best friend wedding.

Kageyama smirks cynically, shakes his head. “You were there for my first wedding so you can be there for the second too.”

“You are becoming a lemon Tobio-kun.”

Kageyama snorts.

“I hope you get to be happy this second time.” Shouyou says and it’s a genuine hope. Kageyama Tobio in Hinata Shouyou’s eyes has always deserved the best: the best spiker, the best team, the best husband or wife.

Kageyama looks at him, and nods. “Thank you.”

***

The hiking trail is easy for the both of them. And for a moment Shouyou thinks they are wasting precious time doing this while they could be doing something else –like making Kageyama toss to him one last time before they _unlink._ It won’t be the same afterwards, and no matter who tosses the ball to him after the _unlink_ he will never get to experience again the euphoria he feels when is Kageyama that does it.

Once they have reached the top, Shouyou stops and stares at the road they left behind. They have come a long, long way.

“Do you ever regret it?” His words are maybe something he’s been thinking for a while now, since those papers arrived at his mailbox.

Kageyama drinks from his water bottle, shakes his head.

“Do you think we could have been enough for each other?”

“Without volleyball?”

Shouyou looks at him with curiosity. “Yeah.”

Kageyama sighs. “No.”

“We had fun those four months though,” Shouyou smiles. He is not bitter, has never really understood bitterness. Those four months are good memories, some of the best he has. “I am glad we were married back then Tobio.”

“We were not great at it though.”

Shouyou laughs. “Yeah. We really weren’t.”

Too young and too in love. A complete disaster and yet they had been so happy.

***

“I heard Oikawa-san married Iwaizumi-san,” Kageyama says. They are in cozy restaurant, family oriented. The ramen they sell is the best in Miyagi. “They aren’t fated ones though.”

Shouyou eats his ramen, takes the scalded egg out of Kageyama’s bowl. “Is the best really, Oikawa would have killed Iwaizumi’s fated one if they had appeared anyway, and I would have had to go visit him in an Argentinian jail.”

Kageyama smiles a little at that. “They have always been in love. Is good to see Iwaizumi-san so happy, he is moving to Argentina though. The National team will suffer a blow thanks to his absence.”

“That’s the power of love though.”

“Hmm.”

Shouyou thinks it’s nice, that at least someone else is having their happy ending with their high-school sweet-heart. “Wanna spend the night at my hotel?”

Kageyama looks at him with an unasked question in his eyes, and yeah Shouyou is implying what Kageyama thinks he is. They had plenty of sex eight years ago, maybe too much. Shouyou was a teen and he was full of energy and hormones, and yeah he was clumsy, but what he didn’t know he filled with enthusiasm.

After some minutes of silence from Kageyama’s part, Shouyou thinks of maybe… apologizing?

People who are about to divorce in four weeks don’t, don’t act the way they have been acting. It should be screaming matches, and blames, a handful of hurt and ill. Just seeing the other bleed to make oneself feel better. Should Shouyou start screaming? Maybe?

“Okay.” 

Shouyou looks up from his empty bowl of ramen with surprise on his face. Kageyama seems normal enough, there isn’t anger in his eyes or disappointment.

“Okay.” Shouyou says and that’s that.

***

Shouyou likes to stare at Kageyama’s hands veins when he sleeps. Kageyama’s skin is pale and his veins look blue under the moonlight. Blue blood fit for a king, one would think.

Just right beside him his fated one sleeps blissfully unaware of Shouyou’s thoughts. For some reason after sex Kageyama always ends up exhausted even if Shouyou is always the one to do all the work. Maybe is just that Tobio-kun has never been good at feeling too much. Or maybe Kageyama has never been that interested in sex in the first place, Shouyou had noticed back then Kageyama tended to indulge his requests regarding this matter but never asked to try something, or initiated himself.

Shouyou has heard people like this exist, and just now he is realizing the gift and trust Kageyama put in him when they did this kind of thing.

“Do you not like having sex?” Shouyou asks him an hour later when Kageyama blinks awake. He seems somewhat disoriented but relaxed. Almost soft.

“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.” Kageyama yawns. “As long as you want to, you have always known, I don’t mind.”

Shouyou frowns, _‘How do you expect to get your future wife pregnant like this?’_ he doesn’t ask that, though. Is not something that he should but his head in. “Really?”

And as many things between them, this is another issue they don’t talk about ever but –somehow Shouyou has always known Kageyama gets enjoyment out of the fact that Shouyou is enjoying it himself. Kenma had said it was about their personalities, about Shouyou being a _Domininant_ or something like that, he isn’t really sure. He doesn’t think is important. 

“Really.” Kageyama agrees, turns his head, black hair splayed on white pillows and dark blue eyes clear from sleep. They stare at each other for a while just like that.

“I have always thought you are the prettiest of all the setters out there. The best.” Just a truth Shouyou is unable to say under bright daylight. These words are meant to be heard by his soulmate, not by the friend he always wants to win against.

“Even prettier than Miya Atsumu?” Kageyama asks.

Shouyou smiles maliciously. “Are you jealous Ka-ge-ya-ma-kun?”

Kageyama rolls his eyes. “Who would be jealous of a dumb-ass like you?”

Shouyou smiles again, there’s no ill behind his smile this time. “Yeah, you are prettier than him.”

_'Than anyone, really."_

***

And the next day just like that their honey moon trip, the one trip they had pending for eight years, ends.

***

Shouyou shows up for the _Unlinking_ process in time, the divorce papers steady in his hands. It’s been four weeks since he saw Kageyama, as the setter was called back to Italy for some matters regarding his upcoming wedding with a nice Italian woman. Shouyou stayed in Japan, he will go back to Brazil once all this process is done.

Kageyama shows up late by his standards, but still early enough that they haven’t lost their _Unlinking_ appointment.

“How would it go?”

“Her parents were worried I would change my mind.”

Shouyou stares at the papers in his hands, doesn’t say a word. _‘Would you?’_

Kageyama nods towards the papers. “Are they done?”

“Yeah, I signed everything.”

“Thank you.”

“You would have done the same for me if I had decided I wanted to marry Miya Atsumu, I know.”Shouyou snickers, pokes him gently in the arm, Kageyama only rolls his eyes.

A sound to their left distracts them and they turn to see what it is. It’s the room to where the _linking_ processes happen just opposite to the waiting room they are standing in. Two women are a laughing happily, their laugher sounds like bells tinkling; they are holding hands and being congratulated in their successful link at seventy-five percent of soulmate compatibility. Shouyou remembers fondly just then, Tobio and him _linked_ at ninety-two percent.

“Say Tobio, they look happy huh?”

“Yes, they do.”

Shouyou keeps staring at them. “Do you think they will ever be here in this room? Years from now?”

_Waiting for an unlinking process, with divorce papers in their hands?_

“Is hard to tell.”

“Do you think they love each other?”

“Yes.”

Orange eyes blink, and just now Shouyou thinks he is at match point but Kageyama has the ball in his court and still can make him lose. His heartbeat is thrumming in his ears. “Do you still love me?”

There’s a pause at that and Shouyou has admit, perhaps he hoped for too much. It’s just like he is, greedy until the very end.

“…”

“Tobio?”

“You must know the answer to that.”

Shouyou looks at him with wonder. “Wanna call the nice Italian woman, apologize, and tell her you are going to spend the post-season in Brazil?”

Tobio looks at him with intent. He really is serious now. “What about my grandchildren?”

“We can always adopt a kid or five.”Shouyou smiles at him, a little sun shining bright. “Wanna get out of here before they call for the _unlinking_?”

Kageyama, hands inside his pockets, averts his eyes and shrugs. Shouyou can see him smiling too. “Sure.”

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**Author's Note:**

> *not betaed, yeah.
> 
> *guess who just finished watching Haikyuu! To the top?! And guess who’s still my fave pair?
> 
> *this one is the fic hinakage I always wanted to write but never dared because, haha, yeah, Hinata is not a character who will tolerate angst. He just doesn’t haven’t in him. It’s been a while since I was in this house-fandom, it feels so nostalgic.


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